'We R not leavin this 1'

One of the first texts came in about 11 or 11:30 p.m. from the home front.

It said something along the lines that it’s getting late at the ballgame, you might want to think about leaving in a little while.

Yes, we were planning on driving home after the game and it’s a four-hour trip back to Princeton, hoping to make it back for the 10:30 a.m. soccer game

This is the postseason. This is the first game of the NLCS. It’s tied in the 10th inning and anything can happen. My girls and I were not about to miss anything no matter the midnight hour.

My reply to the home front was, “Yeah, right.”

With apologies to the Mrs., she is a Cub fan. She doesn’t really understand these kind of things.

My oldest, Brooke, likes to remind her mom there is baseball played in October. Again, mom really wouldn’t know.

Now when Brooke was 5 in 2003, I told her mother to let her stay up and watch Game 6 of the NLCS because the Cubs may never make it back to the World Series in her lifetime. We all know how that came out.

If we would have left early, we would have missed Carlos Beltran’s game-winning double to the right field corner, lifting the Cardinals to a 4-3 win, albeit nearly five hours after the first pitch.

There may have been a few people leave early, but to answer the first question the girls’ mother undoubtedly was going to give us when we got home, “yes, it was worth it, well worth it.”

Anytime you can spend time with your daughters at a ballgame, especially a big ballgame like this one and make memories, it’s worth it. No matter how sleep deprived you may be getting back for that soccer game after a very short stop at a hotel on the way home.

Special thanks to BCR editor Teri Simon and night editor Lyle Ganther for making that all happen and giving the ol’ sports editor his first Friday sports night off in 27 years.

• Seems I’ve been wishing too many condolences of late. Dave Van Drew last month, and in the past week, we’ve lost Bill Lamb, Diane Nyman and Bill Anderson.

Mrs. Nyman was a long time PES teacher and touched many a young life, including my two daughters in the third grade. She was most caring teacher and genuinely treated each and every one of her students as if they were own children. I will always fondly look at the corner at Lincoln School where Mrs. Nyman walked her students across the street at Mrs. Nyman’s corner.

Bill Anderson was one of the best basketball players to come out of the Ohio Bulldog hoops hotbed. He was elected to the Bureau County Sports and the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association halls of fame. He passed down some pretty good basketball genes to his grandson, Lance Harris, the former Bulldog all-stater.

They will all be deeply missed.

• Be sure to see Goldie Currie’s page 2 story on 105-year-old resident Blanche Hewitt. To put her longevity in perspective, she was born two days after the Chicago Cubs last won the World Series.

Kevin Hieronymus is the BCR sports editor. Contact him at khieronymus@bcrnews.com